Anthropology

Summer at last; warm winds, blue skies, puffy clouds. The dog and I are both delirious over the ability to “get out of” quasi imprisonment indoors.

Into the truck; a short drive to the south, up and over the canyon edge into the wide open space of the plateau. Out into “the world again” striding easily along a two-rut track that goes nowhere; the type that is established by the driver of a first vehicle, turning off the road, through the brush, and headed nowhere. Humans cannot resist such a “lure” – Who drove off the road and why?Maybe the track does go somewhere. And so, the tracks grow, simply by repetition of the “nowhere” pattern. Years pass; ruts widen, deepen, grow and are bypassed, smoothed out, and grow again, becoming as permanent and indestructible as the Appian Way.

This particular set of ruts is a habitual dog-walking path for me: the view, the wind, the light, the sky whipped into a frenzy of lovely clouds… and then, agony. Gravel underfoot has turned my foot, twisting my ankle and plunging me into a deep rut and onto the rough ground. Pain; not Whoops, I tripped pain, but OMG! I’m screwed pain. I make a habit of glancing a few feet ahead to check where my feet are going, but my head was in the clouds.

This isn’t the first time in 23 years that I’ve taken a fall out in the boonies: a banged up shin or knee, a quick trip to the gravel; scraped hands, even a bonk on the head, but now… can I walk back to the truck, or even stand up? One, two, three… up.

Wow! Real pain; there’s no choice. Get to the truck, which appears to be very, very far away, at this point. Hobble, hobble, hobble; stop. Don’t stop! Keep going. Glance up at the truck to check periodically to see if it’s “growing bigger” – reachable. I always tell myself the same (true) mantra in circumstances like this: shut out time, let it pass, and suddenly, there you will be, pulling open the truck door and pulling yourself inside.

There is always some dumb luck in these matters: it’s my left ankle. I don’t need my left foot to drive home. Then the impossible journey from the truck to the house, the steps, the keys, wrangling the dog and her leash, trying not to get tangled and fall again – falling through the doorway, grabbing something and landing on the couch. Now what?

That was five days ago. Five days of rolling around with my knee planted in the seat of a wheeled office chair, pushing with the right foot as far as I can go, then hopping like a one-legged kangaroo the rest of the way. Dwindling food supplies; unable to stand to cook; zapping anything eligible in the microwave. No milk in my coffee. Restless nights. Any bump to my bandaged foot wakes me up. This is ridiculous! My life utterly disrupted by a (badly) sprained ankle. I think I’m descending into depression.

Bipedalism, of course, begins to takeover my thoughts. But first, I try to locate hope on the internet, googling “treatment for sprained ankle.” You’re screwed, the pages of entries say. One begins to doubt “evolution” as the master process that produces elegant and sturdy design. Ankles are a nightmare of tiny bones and connecting ligaments, with little blood supply to heal the damage, and once damaged, a human can expect a long recovery, intermittent swelling and inevitable reinjury, for as long as you live.

It seems that for our “wild ancestors” a simple sprain could trigger the expiration date for any individual unlucky enough to be injured: the hyenas, big cats, bears and other local predators circle in, and then the vultures. Just like any other animal grazing the savannah or born into the forest, vulnerability = death. It’s as true today as it ever was. Unless someone is there with you when you are injured, you can be royally screwed: people die in their own homes due to accidents. People die in solo car wrecks. People go for a day hike in a state park and within an hour or two, require rescue, hospitalization and difficult recovery, from one slip in awareness and focus. And, being in the company of one or more humans, hardly guarantees survival. Success may depend on their common sense.

So: the question arises around this whole business of Homo sapiens, The Social Species. There are many social species, and it is claimed that some “non-human” social species “survive and reproduce successfully” because they “travel together” in the dozens, thousands or millions and “empathize” with others of their kind. Really? How many of these individual organisms even notice that another is in peril, other than to sound the alarm and get the hell out of the danger zone or predator’s path? How one human mind gets from reproduction in massive numbers, that is, playing the “numbers game” (1/ 100, 1/100, 1, 100,000 new creatures survive in a generation), and the congregation of vast numbers in schools, flocks and the odds for “not being one of the few that gets caught and eaten” – how one gets from there to “pan-social wonderfulness” is one of the mysteries of the social human mind.

There are occasions when a herd may challenge a predator, or a predatory group; parents (usually the female), will defend offspring in varying manner and degree, but what one notices in encounters (fortuitously caught on camera, posted on the internet or included in documentaries) that solitary instances are declared to represent “universal behavior” and proof of the existence of (the current fad of) empathy in “lesser animals”. What is ignored (inattentional blindness) and not posted, is the usual behavior; some type of distraction or defensive behavior is invested in, but the attempt is abandoned, at some “common sense point” in the interaction; the parents give up, or the offspring or herd member is abandoned.

What one notices is that the eggs and the young of all species supply an immense amount of food for other species.

Skittles evolved solely as a food source for Homo sapiens children. It has no future as a species. LOL

I’ve been watching a lot of “nature documentaries” to pass the time. This is, in its way, an extraordinary “fact of nature”. Our orientation to extreme Darwinian evolution (reductionist survival of the fittest) is stunningly myopic. We create narratives from “wildlife video clips” edited and narrated to confirm our imaginary interpretation of natural processes; the baby “whatever” – bird, seal, monkey, or cute cub; scrambling, helpless, clueless, “magically” escapes death (dramatic soundtrack, breathless narration) due to Mom’s miraculous, just-in-the-nick-of-time return. The scoundrel predator is foiled once again; little penguin hero “Achilles” (they must have names) has triumphantly upheld our notion that “survival is no accident” – which in great measure is exactly what it is.

One thing about how evolution “works” (at least as presented) has always bothered me no end: that insistence that the individual creatures which survive to reproduce are “the fittest”. How can we know that? What if among the hundreds, thousands, millions of “young” produced, but almost immediately destroyed or consumed by chance, by random events, by the natural changes and disasters that occur again and again, the genetic potential “to be most fit” had been eliminated, depriving the species of potential even “better” adaptations than what those we see? We have to ask, which individuals are “fittest” for UNKNOWN challenges that have not yet occurred? Where is the variation that may be acted upon by the changing environment?

This is a problem of human perception; of anthropomorphic projection, of the unfailing insistence of belief in an intentional universe. Whatever “happens” is the fulfilment of a plan; evolution is distorted to “fit” the human conceit, that by one’s own superior DNA, survival and reproduction necessarily become fact.

Human ankles (and many other details) of human physiology are not “great feats of evolutionary engineering.”

Like those two-rut roads that are ubiquitous where I live, chance predicts that most of evolution’s organisms “go nowhere” but do constitute quick and easy energy sources for a multitude of other organisms.

Like this:

Cris Campbell holds advanced degrees in anthropology, philosophy, and law. This (WordPress) blog is his research database and idea playspace. (The most recent post seems to be in 2015, but there is plenty to explore)

Why “Hunter-Gatherers and Religion”?

Anyone who surveys the “religious” beliefs of hunter-gatherers (or foragers) will almost immediately discover that many of them do not have a word that translates as “religion” and do not understand the Western concept of “religion,” as explained to them by ethnographers and others. Anyone who engages in such a survey will also soon discover that hunter-gatherers have a dazzling and sometimes bewildering array of beliefs related to the cosmos, creation, spirits, gods, and the supernatural. Within a single group, these beliefs may be different and contradictory from individual to individual; the beliefs are often fluid and change considerably over time. When comparing groups, the details — at least on the surface — seem to be so different that nothing general can be said about foragers on the one hand and their beliefs on the other hand. Despite this variety, one can identify certain common themes, motifs and tropes that are characteristic of hunter-gatherer metaphysics. These include:

A generalized belief in higher powers, which may be gods, spirits, or other forces; (I would modify this based on those who are visual thinkers and do not make abstract “things”)

A spiritualized reverence for nature and everything of nature; (what does ‘spiritualized’ entail? This is one of those Weasel Words that is never defined)

A cosmology oriented horizontally rather than vertically; “egalitarian”

A cyclic notion of time and perpetual renewal; and (or non-time, ie “living in the present”)

A belief array that includes animism, ritualism, totemism and shamanism. (these are all “western” inventions. The people supposedly practicing these “religions” may not see any difference or separation between these categorizations and behaviors of everyday life. There are atheist hunter-gatherers)

Because humans have been foragers for the vast majority of their time on earth, understanding the supernatural beliefs and practices of hunter-gatherers is essential to any genealogy of religion. This Category will examine those beliefs as part of a larger effort to trace the history of religion.

How ironic! It is modern social humans who are trapped in a supernatural dimension created by “magic words”

Like this:

Optimum population density for a “wild” Asperger? One person per square mile.

The previous post was about the number of modern humans who can peacefully coexist; I decided to google “Asperger’s and territoriality” as well as “Asperger’s and boundaries.” Once again, the links that popped up surprised me, since the claims don’t match my experience. A common assertion is that ASD /Asperger types are aggressive; don’t observe boundaries and must be taught social rules. Social people can tell us the rules and try to force us to act them out, but the rules will still not make sense to us.

It’s pretty obvious that we’re not hierarchical people. My native impulse has always been that any person ought to be approachable. It’s that simple. No one is so high and mighty that they may refuse natural hospitality; neither is anyone so lowly that we may ignore them. I’ve made mistakes in judgment by choosing to be friendly to the wrong person (authoritarian, self-important) and was immediately rejected, but I’ve also found that some people who are “too important to talk to” are often receptive when someone sees beyond their status and speaks to them “on the level.”

I think that social typicals are confused about aggression. What Asperger people experience is fear, and like a wild animal that is cornered, an Asperger may panic and try to escape a confusing social situation, and if not allowed to retreat, will become agitated and desperate. Social typical behavior is unstable and predatory, and therefore not to be trusted. This is not a sound basis for gaining the friendship of an Asperger type individual.

And, I suspect that most, if not all social typicals are not possessed of “magic mind reading” of other people’s “mental and emotional” states, and get exasperated by the people in their daily lives who refuse to say whatever it is they have to say, or to give a straight answer to a reasonable question. Social communication is too often a childish “guessing game” as to what the other person “really thinks” or “how they feel.” How do I know? Google “Why don’t people say what they mean?”

Like this:

I would submit that these personality factors are not scientifically valid, but socially invented and constructed; not objective, but subjective. This “theory without proof” lies outside the scientific method of proof – but these “speculations” are the basis for Psychology; the socio-cultural Western religion.

Note the highly “socially judgmental” descriptions of “low scorers” and “high scorers”. A polarized view of human personality, in which “socially approved” characteristics (outgoing, empathetic, warm, helpful) are given “high scores” The trait categories are also skewed: extraversion, agreeableness, openness – conscientiousness, neuroticism! How do these highly subjective ideas drive the relentless push toward conformity to social prescriptions for “normal, typical, or idealized” behavior, which is determined by culture? What they “measure” is the opinion of the measurer – and his or her socio-cultural agenda. As the author points out, “However, it is important not to conﬂate social desirability with positive effects on ﬁtness.”

continued from: The Evolution of Personality Variation in Humans and animals by Daniel Nettle, Newcastle University in American Psychologist, 2006 Evolution and Behaviour Research Group, Division of Psychology, Henry Wellcome Building, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NE2 4HH, United Kingdom.

Human Personality Traits

The rest of this article follows the structure of the ﬁve factor model of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1985, 1992; Digman, 1990). Though the ﬁve broad factors, or domains, are decomposable into ﬁner facets (Costa & McCrae, 1985) and certainly do not capture all the variation in human personality (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000), there is broad consensus that they are useful representations of the major axes of variation in human disposition (Digman, 1990). Following the considerations outlined in the previous section, I brieﬂy examine the nature of each domain and consider the kinds of costs and beneﬁts that increasing the level of the domain might have with respect to biological ﬁtness. The reviews here are speculative, but they are offered in the hope of stimulating empirical work and of drawing psychologists’ attention to the idea that changing the level of a trait is associated with ﬁtness costs as well as ﬁtness beneﬁts.

Extraversion

Note that many of the “negative risk factors” are actually admired and rewarded in American males: I would go so far as to say, that ‘extraversion’ is tailor-made permission for “boys to be boys” as defined culturally. In females, these same behaviors are viewed negatively. Also, my comments refer to the BIG 5 model, not to the author’s concepts.

A dimension related to positive emotion, exploratory activity, and reward is a feature common to all personality frameworks and theories. Its most common label is extraversion, and its proximate basis is thought to involve variation in dopamine-mediated reward circuits in the brain (Depue & Collins, 1999). I have outlined a trade-offs-based evolutionary model for the maintenance of polymorphism in extraversion (Nettle, 2005). Extraversion is strongly and positively related to number of sexual partners (Heaven, Fitzpatrick, Craig, Kelly, & Sebar, 2000; Nettle, 2005), which, for men in particular, can increase ﬁtness. High scorers are also more likely to engage in extrapair copulations or to terminate a relationship for another. This may lead to their securing mates of higher quality than those secured by individuals who are more constant in their choice of partners. The beneﬁts of extraversion are not limited to mating, as extraverts, or those high on the closely correlated trait of sensation seeking, initiate more social behavior (Buchanan, Johnson, & Goldberg, 2005) and have more social support (Franken, Gibson, & Mohan, 1990) than others. Moreover, they are more physically active and undertake more exploration of their environment (Chen et al., 1999; Kircaldy, 1982). However, in pursuing high sexual diversity, and high levels of exploration and activity in general, extraverts also expose themselves to risk. Those who are hospitalized due to accident or illness are higher in extraversion than those who are not (Nettle, 2005), and those who suffer traumatic injury have been found to be high in sensation seeking (Field & O’Keefe, 2004). High extraversion or sensation seeking scorers also have elevated probabilities of migrating (Chen et al., 1999), becoming involved in criminal or antisocial behavior (Ellis, 1987), and being arrested (Samuels et al., 2004). All of these are sources of risk, risk that in the ancestral environment might have meant social ostracism or death. Moreover, because of their turnover of relationships, extraverts have an elevated probability ofexposing their offspring to step-parenting, which is a known risk factor for child well-being. One can thus conceive of extraversion as leading to beneﬁts in terms of mating opportunities and exploration of novel aspects of the environment but carrying costs in terms of personal survival and possibly offspring welfare. It is unlikely that there will be a universal optimal position on this trade-off curve. Instead, local conditions, including the density and behavioral strategies of surrounding individuals, could lead to a constant ﬂuctuation in the optimal value, and hence genetic polymorphism would be retained.

The neuroticism personality axis is associated with variation in the activity levels of negative emotion systems such as fear, sadness, anxiety, and guilt. The negative effects of neuroticism are well-known in the psychological literature. High neuroticism is a strong predictor of psychiatric disorder in general (Claridge & Davis, 2001), particularly depression and anxiety. Neuroticism is also associated with impaired physical health, presumably through chronic activation of stress mechanisms (Neeleman et al., 2002). Neuroticism is a predictor of relationship failure and social isolation (Kelly & Conley, 1987). A much more challenging issue, then, is ﬁnding any compensatory beneﬁt to neuroticism. However, given the normal distribution observed in the human population, and the persistence of lineages demonstrably high in the trait, such a beneﬁt seems likely. Studies in nonhuman animals, such as guppies (see the Evolution of Variation section), suggest that vigilance and wariness are both highly beneﬁcial in avoiding predation and highly costly because they are quickly lost when predation pressure is absent. In ancestral environments, a level of neuroticism may have been necessary for avoidance of acute dangers.Anxiety, of which neuroticism can be considered a trait measure, enhances detection of threatening stimuli by speeding up the reaction to them, interpreting ambiguous stimuli as negative, and locking attention onto them (Mathews, Mackintosh, & Fulcher, 1997).

Because actual physical threats are generally attenuated in contemporary situations,(this is highly dependent on gender, race, socio-economic and class status and geographical location) the safety beneﬁts of neuroticism may be hard to detect empirically. However, certain groups who take extreme risks, such as alpinists (mostly male?) (Goma-i-Freixanet, 1991) and Mount Everest climbers (Egan & Stelmack, 2003), have been found to be unusually low in neuroticism. Given the high mortality involved in such endeavors (around 300 people have died in attempting Everest), this ﬁnding suggests that neuroticism can be protective. There may also be other kinds of beneﬁts to neuroticism. Neuroticism is positively correlated with competitiveness (Ross, Stewart, Mugge, & Fultz, 2001). McKenzie has shown that, among university students, academic success is strongly positively correlated with neuroticism among those who are resilient enough to cope with its effects (McKenzie, 1989; McKenzie, Taghavi-Knosary, & Tindell, 2000). Thus negative affect can be channeled into striving to better one’s position. However, here neuroticism certainly interacts with other factors. When intelligence or conscientiousness is high, for example, the outcomes of neuroticism may be signiﬁcantly different than when such factors are low. Thus it is quite possible that very low neuroticism has ﬁtness disadvantages in terms of lack of striving or hazard avoidance. Although very high neuroticism has evident drawbacks, it may also serve as a motivator to achievement in competitive ﬁelds among those equipped to succeed. Thus the optimal value of neuroticism would plausibly depend on precise local conditions and other attributes of the person, leading to the maintenance of polymorphism.

Openness

The trait of openness to experience again seems, at ﬁrst blush, to be an unalloyed good. Openness is positively related to artistic creativity (McCrae, 1987). According to Miller’s (1999; 2000a) cultural courtship model, creative production in artistic domains serves to attract mates, and there is evidence that women ﬁnd creativity attractive, (Again, we have the problem of just who is defining and judging what qualifies as “creative production”, a highly subjective culturally-dependent matter, often attributed in the U.S. to whatever/whomever makes a profit…) creative especially during the most fertile phase of the menstrual cycle (Haselton & Miller, 2006), and that poets and visual artists have higher numbers of sexual partners than controls (Nettle & Clegg, 2006). The core of openness seems to be a divergent cognitive style that seeks novelty and complexity and makes associations or mappings between apparently disparate domains (McCrae, 1987). Though such a cognitive style might appear purely beneﬁcial, it is conceptually very similar to components of schizotypy, or proneness to psychosis (of course; creative types are “dangerous” in a rigid, impoverished culture of social conformity) (Green & Williams, 1999; Woody & Claridge, 1977). Indeed, ﬁve-factor Openness correlates positively with the Unusual Experiences scale of the Oxford–Liverpool Inventory for Feelings and Experiences schizotypy inventory (Mason, Claridge, & Jackson, 1995; Rawlings & Freeman, 1997). The Unusual Experiences scale is also correlated with measures of creativity (Nettle, in press-b; Schuldberg, 2000). Individuals scoring high in Unusual Experiences and on measures of creativity have increased levels of paranormal belief (McCreery & Claridge, 2002; Thalbourne, 2000; Thalbourne & Delin, 1994), and ﬁve-factor Openness itself is positively correlated with beliefs in the paranormal (Charlton, 2005). The Unusual Experiences trait is elevated in schizophrenia patients (Nettle, in press), and an extremely similar scale predicted the onset of schizophrenia in a longitudinal study (Chapman, Chapman, Kwapil, Eckblad,&Zinser,1994).Thus, openness and its covariates are associated with damaging psychotic and delusional phenomena as well as high function. Openness itself has been found to be associated with depression (Nowakowska, Strong, Santosa, Wang, & Ketter, 2005), as has a high score on the Unusual Experiences scale (Nettle, in press-b). Thus, the unusual thinking style characteristic of openness can lead to nonveridical ideas about the world, from supernatural or paranormal belief systems to the frank break with reality that is psychosis. What determines whether the outcome of openness is benign or pathological is not fully understood. It may be a simple matter of degree, or there may be interactions with developmental events. Poets, for example, differ from schizophrenia patients not in their Unusual Experiences scores, which are in the same range, but in the absence of negative symptoms such as anhedonia and social withdrawal (Nettle, in press-b).

And yet, we relentlessly promote creativity and “out of the box” thinking in American schools as social positives; are we actually promoting sexual promiscuity, schizophrenia, “Ancient Alien” “UFO” “Paranormal” delusion and psychotic behavior?

The Unusual Experiences trait is positively correlated with mating success in nonclinical populations, at least partly because it leads to creativity (Nettle & Clegg, 2006). However, when it leads to schizophrenia, reproductive success is much reduced (Avila et al., 2001; Bassett et al., 1996). Thus the ﬁtness payoffs to openness appear to be very context or condition dependent, leading to the retention of variation.

Conscientiousness

The remaining two personality domains, conscientiousness and agreeableness, are often thought of as being unalloyed in their beneﬁts, because they are generally negatively related to measures of delinquency and antisocial behavior (e.g. Heaven, 1996). However, it is important not to conﬂate social desirability with positive effects on ﬁtness.Natural selection favors traits that increase reproductive success, including many cases in which this success comes at the expense of other individuals. It is likely that ﬁtness can be enhanced by a capacity to demand a free ride, break rules, and cheat on others under certain circumstances. Conscientiousness involves orderliness and self-control in the pursuit of goals. A by-product of conscientiousness is that immediate gratiﬁcation is often delayed in favor of a longer term plan. This leads, for example, to a positive association of conscientiousness with life expectancy (Friedman et al., 1995), which works through adoption of healthy behaviors and avoidance of unhygienic risks. Very high levels of traits related to conscientiousness —moral principle, perfectionism, and self-control—are found in patients with eating disorders and with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (Austin & Deary, 2000; Claridge & Davis, 2003).

Though some obsessional individuals can be very high achievers in the modern context, it is not evident that their ﬁtness would always have been maximal in a variable and unpredictable ancestral environment. Their extreme self control not only may be damaging, as their routines become pathological, but may lead to the missing of spontaneous opportunities to enhance reproductive success. Highly conscientious individuals have fewer short-term mating episodes (Schmidt, 2004) and will forgo opportunities to take an immediate return that may be to their advantage. Adaptations that orient the organism toward working for long-term payoffs will tend to have the effect of reducing the opportunistic taking of immediate ones. This can have ﬁtness costs and beneﬁts, which will vary with local conditions.

Agreeableness

Agreeableness, with its correlates of empathy and trust, is also generally seen as beneﬁcial by personality psychologists, and its absence is associated with antisocial personality disorder (Austin & Deary, 2000). Agreeableness is strongly correlated with Baron-Cohen’s empathizing scale (Nettle, in press-a), which is in turn argued to measure theory of mind abilities and the awareness of others’ mental states (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004). Several evolutionary psychologists have argued plausibly that as a highly social species, humans have been under strong selection to attend to and track the mental states of others (Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Dunbar, 1996; Humphrey, 1976). Others have noted that we seem to be unique among mammals in the extent of our cooperation with unrelated conspeciﬁcs. Inasmuch as agreeableness facilitates these interactions, it would be highly advantageous. Agreeable individuals have harmonious interpersonal interactions and avoid violence and interpersonal hostility (Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Zimbardo, 1996; Heaven, 1996; Suls, Martin, & David, 1998). They are much valued as friends and coalition partners. Although this may be true, a vast literature in theoretical biology has been devoted to demonstrating that unconditional trust of others is almost never an adaptive strategy.Across a wide variety of conditions, unconditional trusters are invariably outcompeted by defectors or by those whose trust is conditional or selective (see, e.g., Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981; Maynard-Smith, 1982; Trivers, 1971). Levels of aggression can often be selected for (Maynard-Smith, 1982). Very high agreeableness, if it led to an excessive attention to the needs and interests of others, or excessive trusting, would be detrimental to ﬁtness. Among modern executives, agreeableness is negatively related to achieved remuneration and status (Boudreau, Boswell, & Judge, 2001), and creative accomplishment (as distinct from creative potential) is negatively related to agreeableness (King, Walker, & Broyles, 1996). Though it is an uncomfortable truth to recognize, it is unlikely that ﬁtness is unconditionally maximized by investing energy in positive attention to others. Instead, though an empathic cognitive style may be useful in the whirl of social life, it may have costs in terms of exploitation or inattention to personal ﬁtness gains.

Moreover, sociopaths, who are low in agreeableness, may at least sometimes do very well in terms of ﬁtness, especially when they are rare in a population (Mealey, 1995). The balance of advantages between being agreeable and looking after personal interests will obviously vary enormously according to context.For example, in a small isolated group with a limited number of people to interact with and a need for common actions, high agreeableness may be selected for. Larger, looser social formations, or situations in which the environment allows solitary foraging, may select agreeableness downward.

Conclusions

This article has had several purposes. The ﬁrst has been to stress that heritable variation is ubiquitous in wild populations and therefore should be expected as the normal outcome of evolutionary processes acting on human behavioral tendencies. Thus, personality variation can be understood in the context of a large literature, both theoretical and empirical, on variation in other species.

Second, I have suggested that a fruitful way of looking at variation is in terms of trade-offs of different ﬁtness beneﬁts and costs (summarized in Table 1 for the Big Five personality factors). Theories based on trade-offs have been very successful in providing an understanding of evolution in other species. Moreover, the idea of trade-offs can be usefully married to the notion of ﬂuctuating selection to explain the persistence of diversity. Such accounts are not speculative. Studies such as those on great tits, guppies, ﬁnches, and sunﬁsh (see the section on Evolution of Variation) have demonstrated how ﬂuctuations in environmental context change the ﬁtness outcomes associated with particular phenotypes, which in turn affects the future shape of the population through natural selection.Thus, researchers examining nonhuman variation have been able to go well beyond post hoc explanations and actually observe evolution in action. The current trade-off account builds on the ideas of MacDonald (1995), who argued that the observed range of variation represents the range of viable human behavioral strategies and who stressed that there are ﬁtness disadvantages at the extremes. Thus, he stressed stabilizing selection. The present argument is that selection can ﬂuctuate, such that it may sometimes be directional for increasing a trait and sometimes be directional for decreasing it. Among the great tits, for example, selection on exploration is clearly directional in any given year (Dingemanse et al., 2004). The retention of a normal distribution is a consequence of the inconsistency of the direction of selection, not its stabilizing form. That said, I agree with MacDonald that there could be quite general disadvantages at the extremes of some personality dimensions, such as chronic depression with high neuroticism, or obsessive–compulsive personality disorder with high conscientiousness. It is not a necessary feature of the current approach that there always be stabilizing effects. The other major difference between the current approach and that of MacDonald (1995) is that he did not fully develop the notion of trade-offs across the middle range of a continuum, and in particular, he did not develop empirical predictions for the nature of trade-offs for all the different ﬁve-factor dimensions. It is important to stress that trade-offs and ﬂuctuating selection are not the only possible approaches to the maintenance of heritable variation. Biologists have also observed that there are a number of traits that are unidirectionally correlated with ﬁtness and yet in which substantial heritable variation is maintained (Rowe & Houle, 1996). An example would be physical symmetry. In general, the more symmetrical an individual, the higher its ﬁtness, and yet heritable variation in symmetry persists. The maintenance of variation in such cases appears paradoxical, because directional selection might be expected to home in on perfect symmetry and winnow out all variation. The solution to the paradox appears to be that such global traits as symmetry are affected by mutations to many, if not most, genes. Most mutations that arise are to some extent deleterious, so deviation from physical symmetry becomes an index of the load of mutations an individual is carrying.

Selection, particularly that operating via mate choice, favors symmetry, and thus individual deleterious mutations are winnowed from the population. However, so many genes are involved that there is a constant stream of new mutations maintaining population diversity. Thus, symmetry is a ﬁtness indicator trait in that it is a reliable signal of genetic quality. Some heritable human traits may be better explained by ﬁtness indicator theory than by trade-off theory. Miller (2000b), for example, has applied such reasoning to intelligence. Intelligence is correlated with physical symmetry, (reallsuggesting that it taps overall quality (Prokosch, Yeo, & Miller, 2005). Thus, a ﬁtness indicator approach seems likely to be fruitful in such a case. For personality, however, I suggest that an evolutionary trade-off account is likely to be useful. This does not mean that all personality differences are to be explained by the same mechanism. There are likely to be developmental calibration effects, too, as indicated by behavior genetics data showing a role for the unique environment and also as suggested by recent studies on early life stress and adult behavior (Figueredo et al., 2005). However, for the heritable basis of personality, the combination of trade-off and genetic polymorphism seems a fruitful avenue to pursue. It might be objected that the particular costs and beneﬁts put forward here are speculative and as such amount to just-so stories about how personality variation has arisen. The former is true; as for the latter, such a charge misunderstands the utility of adaptive explanation in psychology. The evolutionary framework used here is hypothesis generating. That is, an article such as this one, which draws on evolutionary biology, is not an end in itself but rather an engine for generating testable empirical ideas.

The particular costs and beneﬁts listed here may not turn out to be the correct ones. However, the framework makes testable predictions that would not have been arrived at inductively. For extraversion, the hypothesis that high scorers will have greater numbers of sexual partners but more serious injuries has already been conﬁrmed (Nettle, 2005). For neuroticism, the current framework makes the prediction that performance on certain types of perceptual monitoring tasks, such as detecting an artiﬁcial predator, will actually be improved by neuroticism. Because neuroticism impairs performance on many kinds of tasks, this is a novel prediction.

For openness, the model predicts that high scorers will either be socially successful through creative activity or be socially and culturally marginalized through bizarre beliefs,(who decides which beliefs are “bizarre beliefs? This is highly culturally and individually determined) and the determinants of which outcome prevails may depend on overall condition. This is a hypothesis that certainly merits further investigation (see Nettle & Clegg, 2006).

For conscientiousness, the model predicts that high scoring individuals might perform badly on tasks in which they have to respond spontaneously to changes in the affordances of the local environment, because they will be rigidly attached to previously deﬁned goals. Finally, for agreeableness, the theory predicts that high scorers will avoid being victims of interpersonal conﬂict but may often emerge as suckers in games such as the public goods game and the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game, which are well studied by psychologists and in which the usual equilibrium is a mixture of cooperation and exploitation. Thus, the current framework should be seen not as a post hoc explanation of the past but as an engine of predictions about the consequences of dispositional variation in the present. Such consequences are a central explanatory concern of personality psychology, and as such, the evolutionary framework, with its emphasis on costs, beneﬁts, and trade-offs, could be of great utility.

Like this:

I’m including more of the paper in the next post: a section on the BIG 5 Personality Traits model.

The prejudice against there being an Asperger type “personality” within the variation of “acceptable human” variation, is incredibly strong – and socially enforced – what I have encountered among “psych-psych” professionals is outright dismissal, and even “scorn” at the suggestion that an Asperger individual might not be “developmentally defective” but simply a “version” of Homo sapiens with different sensory and perceptual systems well-adapted to specific natural environments.

Evolutionary Psychology is the branch of psychology that studies the mental adaptations of humans to a changing environment, especially differences in behavior, cognition, and brain structure.

by Daniel Nettle, Newcastle University in American Psychologist, 2006 Evolution and Behaviour Research Group, Division of Psychology, Henry Wellcome Building, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NE2 4HH, United Kingdom.

In recent years, there has been an extraordinary growth of interest in giving ultimate, evolutionary explanations for psychological phenomena alongside the proximate, mechanistic explanations that are psychology’s traditional fare (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Buss, 1995). The logic of ultimate explanations is that for psychological mechanisms and behavioral tendencies to have become and remain prevalent, they must serve or have served some ﬁtness-enhancing function.(We AS types are still here, despite being a 1% minority!)

The explanatory program of evolutionary psychology has concentrated strongly on human universals, such as jealousy, sexual attraction, and reasoning about social exchange (Buss, 1989; Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992; Cosmides, 1989). The focus has been on the central tendency of the psychology of these domains, rather than the observed variation, and explanation has been in terms of adaptations shared by all individuals.Indeed, some evolutionary psychologists have implied that one should not expect there to be any important variation in traits that have a history of selection. For example, Tooby and Cosmides (1992) argued that “human genetic variation . . . is overwhelmingly sequestered into functionally superﬁcial biochemical differences, leaving our complex functional design universal and species typical” (p. 25). The reason invoked for this assertion is that natural selection, which is a winnowing procedure, should, if there are no counteracting forces, eventually remove all but the highest-ﬁtness variant at a particular locus (Fisher, 1930; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990), especially because complex adaptations are built by suites of genes whose overall functioning tends to be disrupted by variation.x

Because of the winnowing nature of selection, the existence of heritable variation in a trait is argued to be evidence for a trait’s not having been under natural selection: “Heritable variation in a trait generally signals a lack of adaptive signiﬁcance” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990, p. 38, italics in original). Tooby and Cosmides (1992) thus suggested that most of the genetic variation between human individuals is neutral or functionally superﬁcial. They did, however, concede a possible role for “some thin ﬁlms” (?) of functionally relevant heritable interindividual differences (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 80). The possible sources of these thin ﬁlms—frequency-dependent selection and selective responses to local ecological conditions—are discussed in greater detail below. What is relevant for the present purposes is the low priority given to understanding these thin ﬁlms relative to the task of describing and explaining the universal psychological mechanisms that humans undoubtedly all share.

Personality Variation and Evolutionary Psychology

There has however, been a response from researchers seeking to marry differential and evolutionary psychology in a way that gives greater weight to the study of individual differences (see, e.g., Buss, 1991; Buss & Greiling, 1999; Figueredo et al., 2005; Gangestad & Simpson, 1990; MacDonald, 1995; Nettle, 2005). David Buss made an early contribution to this literature by enumerating possible sources of functionally important interindividual variation (Buss, 1991; see also Buss & Greiling, 1999). Most of these are mechanisms that do not rely on heritable variation in psychological mechanisms, for example, enduring situational evocation, or calibration by early life events, or calibration of behavior by the size or state of the individual. However, Buss also discussed the possibility that there are equally adaptive alternative behavioral strategies underlain by genetic polymorphisms, or continua of reactivity of psychological mechanisms, in which there is no universal optimum, and so genetic variation is maintained. The idea of continua of reactivity was taken up by Kevin MacDonald (1995). MacDonald proposed that thenormal range of observed variation on personality dimensions represents a continuum of viable alternative strategies for maximizing ﬁtness.

In this view, average ﬁtness would be about equal across the normal range of any given personality dimension, but individuals of different personality levels might differ in the way that they achieved their ﬁtness—for example, by investing in reproductive rather than parental effort. Implicit in MacDonald’s formulation, but perhaps not examined in enough detail, is the concept of trade-offs. The idea of trade-offs is reviewed in detail below, but the key point is that if two levels of a trait have roughly equal ﬁtness overall and if increasing the trait increases some component of ﬁtness, then it must also decrease other components. Every beneﬁt produced by increasing a trait must also produce a cost. If this is not the case, there is no trade-off, and natural selection is directional toward the higher value of the trait.

The purposes of the present article are several. First, no reasonable biologist or psychologist should disagree with Tooby and Cosmides (1990, 1992) that humans’ psychological mechanisms show evidence of complex design and are largely species-speciﬁc. Nor need differential psychologists deny the importance of the branches of psychology that are devoted to the study of species-typical mechanisms. However, I argue that a more up-to-date reading of the very biology from which Tooby and Cosmides draw their inspiration leads to a rather different view of the extent and signiﬁcance of variation. The ﬁlms of functionally signiﬁcant interindividual variation need not be particularly thin. The ﬁrst purpose of this article, then, is to review interindividual variation in nonhuman species, with particular attention to the way that selection can allow variation to persist even when it is relevant to ﬁtness. Second, although Buss’s (1991) and MacDonald’s (1995) reviews have been inﬂuential in enumerating possible evolutionary mechanisms that lie behind the persistence of personality differences, there has as yet been relatively little work in evolutionary personality psychology that actually tests the predictions of these models empirically (for some exceptions, see Figueredo et al., 2005; Gangestad &Simpson, 1990; Nettle, 2005).

The bulk of the work in personality psychology goes on uninspired by considerations of ultimate evolutionary origins. The second purpose of this article, therefore, is to build from MacDonald’s ideas of personality dimensions as alternative viable strategies, outlining a more explicit framework of costs and beneﬁts, and to apply this framework to each of the dimensions of the ﬁve-factor model of personality. This approach allows existing studies that were done from a largely inductive, a theoretical perspective to be interpreted more coherently through the long lens of adaptive costs and beneﬁts. In addition, the approach allows the generation of novel predictions and ideas for future research.

A child is told who it is, where it belongs, and how to behave, day in and day out, from birth throughout childhood (and indeed, throughout life.) In this way culturally-approved patterns of thought and behavior are imparted, organized and strengthened in the child’s brain. Setting tasks that require following directions (obedience) and asking children to ‘correctly’ answer questions along the way, helps parents and society to discover if the preferred responses are in place.

I don’t remember blurting out “Cogito ergo sum!” in school one day. Achieving awareness of my existence was a misty process, a journey taken before I “knew” of an existence of a “self”. Identity (which is not the same as personality) does not pre-exist; it is constructed. Long before a baby is conceived and born, family and society have composed an identity and a comprehensive world picture for it. The majority of those who belong to a religion or a social class are members by accident of birth, not by choice. We are born into cultures and belief systems; into versions of reality invented by humans long departed.

Self awareness comes as we live our lives: true self-esteem is connected to that process, not as a “before” thing, but an “after” thing: a result of meeting life as it really is, not as a social fantasy. Self awareness is built from the expression of talents and strengths that we didn’t know we possessed. It also arises as we see the “world” as its pretentions crumble before us. Being able to see one’s existence cast against the immensity of reality, and yet to feel secure, is the measure of finally giving birth to a “self”.

As a “hyposocial” individual, tattooing is somewhat of a mystery: tattoos are a social “sign of commitment” to a group or belief system, whether or not that group is large or consists of one other person. My reaction is: But what if you change your mind? What if your “self” changes? The notion of a “static” self is difficult to grasp.

Me, me, me, me, me! The social typical orientation. This is how NTs “look” to me.

One of the big mistakes that social typicals make is to attribute intent to Asperger behavior. This is because social typicals are “self-oriented” – everything is about THEM; any behavior on the part of a human, dog, cat, plant or lifeform in a distant galaxy, must be directed at THEM. Example: God, or Jesus, or whomever, is believed to be paying attention 24/7 to the most excruciatingly trivial moments in the lives of social typicals. We’re not as patient as God or Jesus.

The Asperger default mental state is a type of reverie, day-dreaming, trance or other “reflective” brain process; that is, we do “intuitive” thinking. The “blank face” is because we do not use our faces to do this type of thinking.

Sorry – we’re just busy elsewhere! When you ask a question, it can take a few moments to “come out of” our “reverie” and reorient our attention. If you are asking a “general question” that is meant to elicit a “feeling” (social) response, it will land like a dead fish in front of us. Hence the continued “blankness”.

It is a very common assumption that all people “think and act” exactly alike. (Thus the insistence that “underneath it all, everyone is the same” – often said by white people to end discussions of racism) When I was a child I also thought that everyone had “the same brain” as if they roll off an assembly line into our skulls, and it created no end of problems! How could people “come up with” bizarre conclusions and irrational explanations for perfectly logical occurrences? And then one day, I realized that my brain “worked” differently than just about everyone I had ever met.This was a giant leap toward self awareness of the good news / bad news type.

It is exactly this human self-centeredness that makes the “Theory of Mind” and “mind-reading” so laughable.

Neurotypicals assume that the other person thinks and feels as they do: this is a good “guess” when social people account for 99% of the population and the self is “imported” from an extremely limited socio-cultural menu. And, social people are taught to automatically agree with what others say, in order to be considered a “nice person”.

Who am I?

The answer for me turned out to be simple: I am everything I have ever seen. Meep! Meep!

Like this:

A. I. Hallowell on ‘Orientations for the Self’

The following summary of Hallowell’s analysis as set out in his paper The self and its behavioral environment (most easily accessible as Chapter 4 of his book Culture and Experience (1955; 2nd Edition, 1971): University of Pennsylvania Press, has been taken from A. Lock (1981) Universals in human conception, in P.L.F. Heelas and A.J. Lock (eds.) Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self. London: Academic Press, pp19-36, with minor revisions.

NOTE: I’m “looking into” concepts of “self” and “self-awareness” after confronting, over and over again, the claim that “some high number” of Asperger types lack “self-esteem” – another of those sweeping generalities that likely is a ‘social judgement’from the “outsider” – parent, teacher, psychologist, counselor, therapist, hairdresser, clerk at convenience store, neighbor or any bystander caring to comment on child behavior. This “lack of self-esteem” has become a “fad, cliché, causal certainty” for almost any perceived “human behavioral problem” in American psychology, education, child-rearing, pop-science, media and common gossip.

My observation of this presentation of “self” (in a socio-cultural context) is that it’s BAD NEWS for Asperger types, or any individual whose inclination is to “develop” his or her own particular expression of self. Here is the problem: self, self awareness, self-control, self-determination and the myriad applications of the concept of “self” are commonly held to be “real things”; they are not. As pointed out in the selection below, in “normdom” the self is “fictitious” – a creation of culture; culture is a creation of selves.

If an individual is for some reason, “out of sync” with the concept of self that is a co-creation of “homogeneous individuals” who subscribe to the same “cultural code” of belief, behavior, and perception of “reality” – well, it’s obvious that one is “in trouble” from the start: How does one “grow, create, construct” a familiar, comfortable, interesting, exploratory concept of self in a hostile socio-cultural environment?Even more difficult is the “biological, evolutionary” possibility, that one’s brain organization, and indeed, one’s experience of the environment, and perceptual fundamentals, are truly “alien” to those of the majority.

As for “self-esteem” – is this not a concept of social conformity?

In contemporary culture, the selfie = the self.Posting selfies on social media advertises one’s conformity to a culturally “approved” definition of “self” – which for girls and women, is an “image only” competition for social status. The desperation of “adult” women to conform to “imaginary standards” results in some very regrettable behavior.

If one’s internalized “picture” of self matches that of what is expected and demanded by the dominant culture, then one is judged to “have self-esteem”. Any person who doesn’t measure up to the cultural “image” (imaginary standard) lacks self-esteem. The most obvious example today, is the crisis of “self-hatred” in young women due to highly distorted “ideals” of body type, promoted by misogynistic American cultural standards. External form is declared to be the self.

Three things may be said about self-awareness:

(i) Self-awareness is a socio-cultural product. To be self-aware is, by definition, to be able to conceive of one’s individual existence in an objective, as opposed to subjective, manner. In G. H. Mead’s (1934) terms, one must view oneself from ‘the perspective of the other‘. Such a level of psychological functioning is only made possible by the attainment of a symbolic mode of representing the world. Again, this mode of mental life is generally agreed to be dependent upon the existence of a cultural level of social organization. We thus come to a fundamental, though apparently tautologous point: that the existence of culture is predicated upon that of self-awareness; and that the existence of self-awareness is predicated upon that of culture.In the same way as in the course of evolution the structure of the brain is seen as being in a positive-feedback relationship with the nature of the individual’s environment, so it is with culture and self-awareness: the self is constituted by culture which itself constitutes the self.

(ii) Culture defines and constitutes the boundaries of the self: the subjective-objective distinction. It is an evident consequence of being self-aware that if one has some conception of one’s own nature, then one must also have some conception of the nature of things other than oneself, i.e. of the world. Further, this distinction must be encapsulated explicitly in the symbols one uses to mark this polarity.Consequently, a symbolic representation of this divide will have become ‘an intrinsic part of the cultural heritage of all human societies‘ (Hallowell, 1971: 75). Thus, the very existence of a moral order, self-awareness, and therefore human being, depends on the making of some distinction between ‘objective’ (things which are not an intrinsic part of the self) and ‘subjective’ (things which are an intrinsic part of the self).

This categorical distinction, and the polarity it implies, becomes one of the fundamental axes along which the psychological field of the human individual is structured for action in every culture. … Since the self is also partly a cultural product, the field of behaviour that is appropriate for the activities of particular selves in their world of culturally defined objects is not by any means precisely coordinate with any absolute polarity of subjectivity-objectivity that is definable. (Hallowell, 1971: 84)

language does not look upon objective reality as a single homogeneous mass, simply juxtaposed to the world of the I, but sees different strata of this reality: the relationship between object and subject is not universal and abstract; on the contrary, we can distinguish different degrees of objectivity, varying according to relative distance from the I.

In other words, there are many facets of reality which are not distinctly classifiable in terms of a polarity between self and non-self, subjective or objective: for example, what exactly is the status of this page – is it an objective entity or part of its author’s selves; an objective entity that would exist as a page, rather than marks on a screen, without a self to read it? Again, am I responsible for all the passions I experience, or am I as much a spectator of some of them as my audience is? While a polarity necessarily exists between the two – subjective and objective/self and non-self – the line between the two is not precise, and may be constituted at different places in different contexts by different cultures. The boundaries of the self and the concomitant boundaries of the world, while drawn of necessity, are both constituted by cultural symbolism, and may be constituted upon differing assumptions.

(iii) The behavioural environment of individual selves is constituted by, and encompasses, different objects. Humans, in contrast to other animals, (that need for human exception again) can be afraid of, for example, the dark because they are able to populate it with symbolically constituted objects: ghosts, bogey men, and various other spiritual beings.(Supernatural, magical entities grew out of “real” danger in the environment: just as did “other” animals, we evolved in natural environments, in which “being afraid of the dark” is a really good reaction to the “the dark” because it’s populated by highly dangerous predators – it’s still a good “attitude” to have when in a human city today.)

As MacLeod (1947) points out,

purely fictitious objects, events and relationships can be just as truly determinants of our behaviour as are those which are anchored in physical reality. Yes, this is a serious problem in humans; the inability to distinguish natural from supernatural cause-explanation relationships leaves us vulnerable to bad decision-making and poor problem-solving.

In Hallowell’s view (1971: 87):

such objects, (supernatural) in some way experienced, conceptualised and reified, may occupy a high rank in the behavioural environmentalthough from a sophisticated Western point of view they are sharply distinguishable from the natural objects of the physical environment.* However, the nature of such objects is no more fictitious, in a psychological sense, than the concept of the self.

*This sweeping claim to “sophistication” is typical over-generalization and arrogance on the part of Western academics, who mistake their (supposedly) superior beliefs as common to all humans, at least in their cultural “fiefdoms”. The overwhelming American POV is highly religious, superstitious, magical and unsophisticated; the supernatural domain (although imaginary) is considered to be the source of power that creates “everything”.

This self-deception is common: religion exempts itself from scrutiny as to its claims for “absolute truth” above and beyond any rational or scientific description of reality. It’s a case of, “You don’t question my crazy beliefs, and I won’t question yours.”

Like this:

Language has a problem: words, even those meant to have specific definitions and uses, gather extra meanings once “let loose” in different environments, including academia, popular conversation, and ethnic, religious, and social groups. Words can become so degraded that they no longer have a specific (or even consistent) meaning and must be re-evaluated.

Conscious(ness) is one of those words.

Human beings are severe hoarders – any and every idea is saved, whether valid, nonsensical, or incomprehensible. Archaic ideas are held to be as true or accurate as modern knowledge. The result is that human thoughts, from the confused and valueless, to the sublime and revolutionary, are a tangle of debris, like that of a Tsunami that collects everything in its path. And now that we have the Internet, no one is cleaning up the clogged beaches.

Any discussion of “being conscious” must first define what “being conscious” is, but few writers bother to do this. I think that an individual animal (human) is either conscious or not. Qualifiers such as “partially conscious” or “levels of consciousness” demonstrate that we don’t have a clear definition or understanding of being conscious.

If we want to make progress in the study of human behavior, we must strip away the overburden of “supernatural and archaic” deposits that murkify the idea of a “conscious state.” There needs to be a valid intellectual scaffold on which to arrange concrete evidence. I don’t care how in love with psycho-babble our culture is, consciousness must be rooted in physical reality.

Humans not only hoard objects, we hoard ideas that clutter and devalue our thinking.

A short list of terms that I use in evaluating information.

Natural: Having a real or physical existence as opposed to one that is supernatural, spiritual, intellectual, or fictitious.

Supernatural: A being, object, location, concept or event that exists outside physical law: a dimension that exists solely in the human mind.

Mind:The sum of an organism’s or group’s reactions to the environment. Instinct is the source of automatic reactions; other reactions may be learned. So-called “emotion” is a physiologic response to the environment and belongs to mind.

Culture:The sum of an organism’s or group’s interactions with the environment. These interactions may be instinctual, learned or invented.

Mind and culture are not exclusive to Humans. Bacteria react to, and interact with the environment.

The criteria that I use to define mind and culture removes the “supernatural” barrier between our species and what is referred to as “lower animals” or “the rest of life” or plants, and all that “alien” stuff such as fungus, which do react and interactwith the environment in amazing ways and therefore possess mind and culture.

Consciousness is the use of verbal language to process and communicate information. (Not limited to other humans; we talk to anything alive or dead.)

This definition recognizes consciousness as a process; it is not a “thing” – not a bump on the brain nor a nebulous supernatural fog. This definition frees us to talk about the characteristics of human consciousness, without having to project our type of verbal consciousness onto other life forms. It also recognizes nonverbal communication and the ALTERNATE states produced by using other languages – music / mathematics / visual-spatial and other languages of which we are unaware. These other brain processes require new definitions and terms. Individuals whose primary communication is by means of mathematics / music surely experience brain states not available to concrete visual thinkers like me.

Conscious does not = self aware. Animals such as apes or dolphins are self aware as demonstrated by the mirror trick, but as to what subjective state occurs when they use their languages, we are not in a position to know. Their languages surely convey information, but their subjective experience is outside our knowing.

Like this:

Have been cruising websites that dole out advice on what to do to “cure defiant children” (code for ASD / Asperger kids) of their “crimes against authority” behavior.

All these “advisors” babble on about how “different” ASD kids are, but then proceed to provide “disciplinary tactics” that apply to neurotypical children.

Somehow no one seems to “get” that immediate obedience to every “command” is not realistic, whether the child is ASD, typical, or other.

Instant obedience to a parent’s or teacher’s command, is however, the expectation in today’s culture.

It’s as if the child is an object, not a living being with a life of its own.

The “excuse” of parents “being at the mercy of modern fast-paced and demanding schedules” is used over and over again. Time management is offered as a solution, rather than making the kids a priority.

What kind of relationship can a parent have with a child, when he or she is constantly told to “hurry up, do it now” and subjected to impatience, anger, screaming and little else from their mother or father?

How does a child feel, when it is obvious that a golf tee time or appointment at a nail salon is more important to the parent than a few moments of consideration for the child’s age and needs?

All this was very simple back in the Dark Ages, when I was a child.

My father was King.

My mother was his official representative when he was not present in the castle.

All my mother had to say (not scream or shout) was, “Your father will be home at 5:00 p.m.”

Done.

At 5:00 p.m., the King arrived. Any “transgressions” during the day were calmly related by Mom and promptly addressed, but not with threats of punishment, exile to my room, physical attack, or deprivation of privileges. These were not needed.

My father would say, “Your mother is to be respected; if you don’t respect her, that hurts me.” He always backed her up. “Now go tell your mother that you’re sorry.”

By this time, I was practically in tears at having been hot-headed, stubborn, wild, or just plain stupid. Strange, how my parents used a united front and sincerity to teach us good behavior. It didn’t guarantee obedience, but my father, being Asperger, knew that often the problem was that I needed an explanation as to why he, or my mother, asked me to do something. Expecting me to jump like a scared rabbit was never expected.

Love, logic and patience, not aggression and domination, were his secret “dad” powers.